Enhancing access to parenting services through the use of digital technology supported practices

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Presenter: Dr Ailsa Munns¹ & Dr Jane Kohlhoff² (on behalf of wider research team: Dr Elaine Bennett, Prof Catherine Fowler, Ms Wendy Simpson)

Organisations:
¹Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator Child and Adolescent Nursing Programs at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine, Curtin University

²Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Australia and Research Fellow at Karitane

Date Presented 12/11/20

Early Parenting Services (EPSs) in Australia and New Zealand have a long history of providing support for families, building parenting capacity, enhancing parent-child relationships, and strengthening family connections with community supports. Parents often contact an EPS when they require additional assistance with issues to do with their children’s sleep, nutrition, behaviour or parental adjustment and/or distress in the early years of life, particularly during the first two years. This assistance varies from providing individual information and education, or meeting parents in a group context, through to more specialised support such as individual parent/family consultations, counselling or therapeutic group work for the enhancement of the parent/child relationship.

Traditionally, EPSs have supported parents by using face-to-face methods. In recent years, however, many EPCs have adopted innovative digital technologies to improve service access for metropolitan and rural families. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this trend has increased exponentially; EPCs have undergone rapid transformations of their service delivery models to utilize digital technologies to enable the continuation of service provision despite social distancing requirements and other restrictions associated with the pandemic.